Colonial Dislocations and Incorporation of Indigenous Migrants From Mexico to the United States

Social-Historical Context of Migration and Mexican Melting-Pot Concept

Indigenous migration must be contextualized in a history of colonialism. Classical colonialism forced the first indigenous migrations and incorporation into exploitative labor systems throughout the Americas. Into the 19th century, for instance, indigenous communities in central Mexico underwent the following colonial conditions:

[The San Josef Huecorio community is] reduced to 49 tributary Indians, who name their mayor and council for the collection of royal tributes. They work as peasants in mills, cutting firewood and growing small amounts of corn, because to their bad luck the Hacienda de San Nicolás has expanded into their land, reducing it in size and to the poorest quality. They do not have a choice but to migrate from their localities and to search for sustenance in unhealthy climates that destroys their population little by little. (Bravo Ugarte, 1960, pp. 23-25)

Haciendas expanded unto indigenous lands and suppressed communities’ self-sufficiency and autonomy forcing many into colonial labor. The 1810 independence movements challenged this external colonialism benefitting the European Crown, but once achieved, the independence (1821) ultimately benefitted criollo hacendados (Europeans born in the Americas) who had desired higher profits from their European kingdoms and opportunistically sided with the brown masses seeking self-determination (Barajas, 2009). Criollos and hacendados positioned themselves at the top of the new nation and advanced their interests more effectively than their previous kingdoms (Cockcroft, 1998). Internal colonialism followed the older colonial forms, but was managed by and benefitted rulers from within Mexico (Casanova, 1963, 1965; Stavenhagen, 1964). Neocolonialism, another form of external colonialism, soon intersected with the internal oppression of indigenous communities. The United States—which had appropriated half of Mexican-claimed lands in 1848—formed collaborative relations with internal colonizers within Mexico and eventually dominated much of the national wealth and transferred it across the border (Casanova, 1963; Cockcroft, 2010; Hart, 2002).

In the period of overlapping colonialisms, the Porfiriato dictatorship (1876-1910) intensified the oppression of a predominately indigenous nation (Barajas, 2009; Bonfil Batalla, 1996; Casanova, 1963, 1965; Stavenhagen, 1964). Indigenous territories were reduced in greater proportions than the three previous centuries (Cockcroft, 1998). Only about 3% to 4% of the Mexican population owned land, and much of the wealth rested in foreign hands, particularly the northern neighbor (Galarza, 1964; Weber, 1998). Migrations from Mexico grew noticeable in numbers (Acuña, 1988), but formed only about 1% to 2% of the total foreign-born population in the United States, while Europeans constituted about 90% (Barajas, 2012, 2013). While Mexican indigenous migration has a long and continuous history, intersecting systems of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism effectively regulated the form and size of migration into the northern nation. Indigenous communities were not wanted as members of the United States and were allowed only as imported colonial labor (Gonzalez, 2006; Menchaca, 1993, 1995; Ngai, 2004). These migrants have faced more restrictive borders and marginalization within/across nations (Cornelius, Fitzgerald, Hernández-Díaz, & Borger, 2009; Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Stephen, 2007).

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, material conditions mirrored those during the Porfiriato dictatorship, which stimulated the Mexican Revolution, dislocated many indigenous communities from their lands/resources, and forced them into migration to el norte (Barajas, 2012, 2013). For the first time in U.S. history in the 1980s, Mexican-origin migration surpassed European migration. In the first decade of the 21st century, it formed a third of the total foreign-born population, accounted for half of the national growth, and made up 60% of the undocumented population (Pew Hispanic Center, 2009, 2011, p. 1). In this context, racist nativism and border enforcement, along with a recession, attacked and paused migration from Mexico (Barajas, 2012).

Many scholars, however, treat Mexican-origin migrants as monolithic national group missing significant areas of diversity and stratification such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, among others (Massey, Alarcón, Durand, & González, 1987; Massey, Durand, & Malone, 2002). Some even expect them to follow the path of European-origin migration, blending in and assimilating (quickly, jumpy, and eventually) with the larger melting-pot mainstream society (Jiménez, 2010; Vasquez, 2011). Yet, today like in the past, the Mexican-origin people have the lowest per capita income, educational attainment, and health coverage, among other indicators of well-being (Barajas, 2011). Their relative group position in the nation has not improved across generations (Barajas, 2009; Telles & Ortiz, 2008).

The failure to explore the internal stratification of national-origin migrants and to place their migration in a longitudinal historical context distorts the causes of their migration and nature of their incorporation to the United States. Homogenizing and melting-pot ideologies have been part of historical colonial projects directed against indigenous people (Bonfil Batalla, 1996). After the 1910 Revolution, for instance, Mexican-origin people suffered “de-indianization” projects, also known as mestizaje (Bonfil Batalla, 1996, pp. 15-18, 45-58; Léon-Portilla, 1990, p. 10; Menchaca, 1993, pp. 593-595). Many thus became Mexicanized through colonial and migration experiences (Barajas, 2009, pp. 65-66, 80; Forbes, 1982, p. 156; Valenzuela, 2009, p. 1; Weber, 1998, p. 218; Wolf, 1959, p. 44; Zabin, Kearney, García, Runsten, & Nagengast, 1993, p. 9).

In a recent study of racial identification among Latinos, 23% saw themselves as White (though a majority selected that census label), 0.7% as Black, and 66% as Other (Stokes-Brown, 2012). Stigmatized identities, such among Mexicans lo indigena, are rejected as a consequence of a long history of racial-ethnic oppression. However, historical and genetic evidence demonstrates Latin America’s racialized makeup with Mexico and Central America being significantly indigenous and the Caribbean being African (Bryc et al., 2010). Racial and ethnic identification among Mexican-origin people reflects continuous experiences with colonial structures/values that have affected their sense of self and community, acutely notable among indigenous migrants in the United States.

Incorporation of Indigenous Migrants and Emergent Identities

Given the long historical colonial dislocations and experiences with migration to the United States, how do indigenous migrants cope with and mediate their incorporation into the United States? Some common practices of survival emerge such as creating networks of support, building transnational communities, and developing identities that reflect their realities.

Indigenous migrants benefit from their communal orientations and strong networks across borders (Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Kearney, 2000). These communal values and practices— collectivism, usos y costumbres (tradition and common practices), cargos (community service obligations), tequios (collective projects), and so on—have allowed indigenous communities to be independent, self-sufficient, and successful in surviving for millennia before European conquest (Fenelon & Murguia, 2008; Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Kearney, 1972; Stephen, 2007). Their networks are built through mutual, affective, and collaborative obligations and can change in form and nature as people experience different environments and cultures (Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Kearney, 2000; Menjívar, 2000; Stephen, 2007).

From postmodern and assimilation perspectives, however, immigrants are expected to abandon their ethnic communities and identities as they become Americanized and individualized. In a transnational context, ethnic identities are also predicted to fragment and multiply as migrants and their children experience multicultural contexts and competing values and relations (Goldring, 2003, p. 167; Smith, 2003, pp. 202, 227-229). Thus, mainstream views, guided by the European experience, theorize that with time immigrants become integrated as individual Americans into a national melting pot. However, these perspectives underestimate how racial, class, and gender systems maintain social hierarchies and produce relational identities that make it clear for marginalized people where they stand and what they value in society (Glenn, 2002, pp. 13-14; Guarnizo & Smith, 2003, pp. 11, 20-23).

Although indigenous communities face enormous challenges in reproducing culture and traditions (Bonfil Batalla, 1996; Léon-Portilla, 1990), they have not been melted away in the United States (Barajas, 2009). Their efforts to reproduce community within and across nations reflect their resistance and determination to exist as cultural distinct communities (Barajas, 2009; Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Goldring, 2003; Hall & Fenelon, 2009). Community formation offers them a source of valorization and security.

In an interview with a migrant education instructor and an indigenous family, I asked how they felt about indigenous fellows who lost their ability to speak Mixteco (Ruiz & Barajas, 2012). The instructor reflected on a particular case in her classroom:

I feel sad because there are children whose mothers speak Mixteco, but the children say “we don’t speak Mixteco . . . I am not from Oaxaca.” I have a child in class, Anita, who tells me all year long, “I don’t speak Mixteco. . . .” And now that there is a bigger group that speaks Mixteco, now she tells me, “I speak Mixteco too.” I feel sad, because I think “who tells her not to speak Mixteco. . . .” I feel bad, because it is nice that she can speak it, and it is a secret that she holds about her Mixteco language. (Ruiz & Barajas, 2012, p. 134)

I also asked a young farmworker in his early 20s to translate for me and ask his mother how she felt about youth losing their language, and she said that “I would feel bad if they lost their language.” Not being able to communicate with her grandchildren was of concern. The son then elaborated, “When children go to school they feel afraid. They discriminate each other and they feel ashamed of speaking their language. They will rather say they do not speak it” (Ruiz & Barajas, 2012, p. 137). By hiding their language, indigenous children try to pass for Mexican Americans in a predominately Latino school. Mainstream teachers often do not differentiate between them because the more Mexicanized, Americanized or not, students may look as indigenous in appearance though lack the indigenous culture that was similarly repressed among their earlier generations.

A visiting indigenous teacher from Oaxaca, working for a migrant education program during the summer, corroborated the observations above:

I asked [indigenous families from Oaxaca] who have been in the United States for 8-10 years, when they invited us to their homes, if they were teaching their mother tongue to their children, and the answer was no. I asked them why that was, and they said that their children do not want to learn because of the fact that U.S. children [mostly Mexican] discriminate against them. They call them “Oaxaquita, Oaxaca.” (Ruiz & Barajas, 2012, p. 135)

In an institutional context that privileges one culture and language, the message is clear that other languages and cultures are not as worthy. The need for an affirming community becomes indispensable for indigenous children’s academic and general success.

Transnational communities partly serve as resistance against the dominant meanings/practices that suppress ethnic diversity and reduce people’s humanity to cheap labor (Barajas, 2009; Kearney, 2000). Transnational migrants develop a sense of dual homes, maintain social networks across national/cultural borders, and replenish their ethnic ties and traditions. Furthermore, broad-based indigenous coalitions such the Oaxacan Indigenous Binational Front seek the right to exist with dignity at work and larger society (Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Stephen, 2007). Formal and informal organizations thus empower indigenous communities and help them maintain a healthier sense of self and more dignified life. Minorities able to retain and affirm their parent culture generally have a healthier self-esteem and higher success rates (Collins, 2004; hooks, 2004; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006).

Notwithstanding this, over time structural power inequalities between minority and dominant societies do reduce the retention of the parent culture. Their ethnic identity, however, does not become hyper-individualized (Anzaldúa, 1987; Besserer, 1999; Rouse, 1992; Torres, 1998), because their full acceptance into American society is always mediated by race, class, and gender. More commonly, the indigenous American experience exemplifies a collective nepantla condition (group-level hybridity), whereby those in between competing influences create a third space that affirms their unique realities and self-image, such as unique dress and linguistic styles blending different cultural influences (Barajas, 2009). Léon-Portilla (1990, p. 10) defined the nahuatl concept nepantla as being a product of two worlds but not fully of either, rather its own new construct, a neutral one.

Fox and Rivera-Salgado (2004, p. 14), for instance, refer to the Oaxacalifornia transnational experience, whereby indigenous Oaxaqueñas/os integrate both sides of the border into a new experience. Living in between cultures and nations creates new group experiences, making them distinct from nonmigrants in homeland communities and the nonmigrants in the receiving society. The creation of personal symbols, meaning, and emotions is shaped by living in between two unequal worlds and their alliances with other marginalized communities facing common struggles. In time an emergent nepantla is common among transnational indigenous communities.

A nepantla, which does not look like the sending or receiving society, is not defective as classical and segmented, assimilation theorists suggest (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006), but reflects the weaving of different worlds into something new (Barajas, 2009). So while the first generation remains strong in their home cultures and weak in the dominant culture, the 1.5 and second generations often become fluent in both home and dominant cultures, speaking two or three languages and displaying traditions from several influences (Chavez, 2008; Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Fraga et al., 2010). However, by the third generation the grandparents’ language and some traditions are gone and new ones made. Significantly, this ethnic formation is not in the form of Anglo conformity or one big American melting pot because indigenous people retain a sense of ethnic distinctiveness from the dominant society, which does not treat them as equals (Barajas, 2009, 2012).

In another interview with a Mixteca woman in her late 40s, I asked whether the younger generations would retain their indigenous traditions and language, and she responded,

Regrettably, our traditions are no longer like in Oaxaca. We are many Mixtecos here, but even among us, there are many people that want to leave their culture behind. Partly is because we don’t have the opportunities to reproduce it like over there, and also because some don’t want to be so simple. Moreover, some of our children did not see the culture, they were not born with it, and more of it gets lost. (May 18, 2011)

“What can be done?” I asked. In her case, her two children had not learned Mixteco and spoke mostly Spanish. She reflected that improving parents’ communication with children would greatly help. Parents could talk about culture and respect to improve their relationship with children and to give them strength to embrace their language, traditions, roots, and parents. The school could also help by embracing diversity and bilingualism, teaching children about Mixteco and other indigenous cultures and enforcing equal treatment of different ethnicities and races (Ruiz & Barajas, 2012). The educational realities are harsh for indigenous children and their communities’ survival. In what follows I share personal observations on visits to two schools in a rural community in the Central Valley in California:

This week I went to with a colleague, Nadeen Ruiz, and others friends to observe two elementary schools in a rural Central Valley town. One school was following the state policy of English only, and the second one resisting it. We were interested in learning how U.S. and Mexican teachers could be more effective instructors to transnational indigenous children, whose families now constitute a great majority of the farm workers in California. . . . Anyhow, we visited several classrooms of K-3rd grades in both schools.

The first school was guided by narrow standards of English only, in which the students closest to the middle class, white norm in a very manifest form were moved to the center of the class in terms of affirmation and success. The teacher spoke only English, and related to them in a very formal and commanding manner, rewarding with stickers those who performed best within her narrow academic standards (i.e., one culture, one language, one history, hierarchical relations). Thus, in a predominately Mexican-American school, the curricular structure/culture privileged the English monolingual children, followed by bilinguals, next Spanish speakers, and at the margins were the indigenous children. These latter students were withdrawn, and seemed liked caged and frightened little birds. It was a painful experience for me to see [reminding me of my own school experiences (Barajas, in press)]. Indigenous children suffered insults and rejection from other children in the larger school setting, and many quickly were pushed to deny their indigenous heritage.

The second school—guided by a different philosophy that embraced cultural difference and used standards that reflect a broader universe of experiences and knowledge—offered a truly exciting learning environment for all students. We entered one class, and the teacher asked about 24 students who knew the Mixtecan language, and about 4 raised their hands. She then asked who knew how to count to ten in Mixtecan, every single hand went up. They counted, and then the teacher thanked them in Mixtec, and the children thanked their teacher also in Mixtec. The Mixtecan children, while a numeric minority, were not marginalized, but included in the curriculum and invited to be at the center as valued members of the classroom and larger community. Children here related more respectfully with each other in the playground, and there were fewer incidents of ethnic nativism, because the larger educational structure and culture embraced difference and equality.

In brief, the learning environments were different universes: one was colonial, oppressive (nationalist), with narrow standards, and disconnected from the real world, which is a diverse and interconnected globally. The second one reflected a constructive and exciting academic world where children valued diversity, learned from each other, and developed skills that truly prepare them to grow to their fullest potential in world were borders do not matter, and those who are able to cross them live richer and more productive lives. Unfortunately, schools generally reproduce a nationalism that was never meant to be inclusive of diverse people. (January 29, 2011)

Reflections on Survival and Justice

Looking over the past century, many Mexican-origin indigenous communities became Mexicanized through colonial and transnational experiences as they shared common experiences at work and larger U.S. society (Barajas, 2009; Valenzuela, 2009; Weber, 1998; Zabin et al., 1993). The forces that dislocate them from their homeland, overlapping oppressions (internal and neocolonialisms) also affect indigenous migrants across the border. For instance, immigrants that have been Mexicanized—that is, de-indianized and mestizoized (Bonfil Batalla, 1996)—tend to have internalized the devaluation of their indigenous heritage and project biases against their more indigenous transnational communities. Some use indigenous identities as put-downs such as indio, apache, totonaca, oaxaquita, or nahualona or make racist comments such as no tiene la culpa el indio pero quien lo hizo compadre (it is not the Indians’ fault, but of who trusted him to be a compadre). Interestingly, in the larger society, they are all Mexican, and imagined as aliens. Racist nationalism, as exemplified by Arizona’s SB 2281 (outlawing Mexican American studies) and SB 1070 (anti-immigrant act), places one ethnicity/culture as the standard for all others. In such a colonial context (recall the interviews above), indigenous cultures that precede the modern nations suffer overlapping oppressions across borders and are endangered (Léon-Portilla, 1990). The emergent collective nepantla cultural form reflects an in-between position that blends two very unequal worlds, but not fully belongs to either. These cultural and ethnic changes have been experienced by every ethnicity and racialized group, yet the problem is that one group’s cultural/structural form has become hegemonic and imposes itself as a universal standard for everyone else. It not only violates human rights, it is comprehensively destructive.

In the past 500 years, colonial-rooted cannibalistic cultures and structures have consumed the total lives of those they exploit for the sake of material greed, cultural supremacy, and total domination (Forbes, 1979). Although the challenge for indigenous people is great, the survival of everyone else is dependent on their success. Organic cultures and practices developed over thousands of years allowed diverse indigenous communities to flourish in the Americas. Resistance and revitalization models for survival may be found among the most marginalized indigenous communities in the rural valleys of California, who continue to practice and value inclusive shared governance, redistributive economy, collective land tenure, and communalism (Fenelon & Murguia, 2008).